Joey

... had curly hair,
sticks for arms and legs,
and mischief in his eyes.
Thin and pale, 
his mother always home, his father never.
We played together,
when we were six  or seven,
I can’t recall specifics,
but it was the time before the tenement houses on West105th St.
were sealed with cinder blocks painted with flowers and window curtains.
There was a difference over a shoeshine box - 
did he try to steal it?
He, a runty Irish boy. 
Me, Chinese, big for my age.
My body covered him as I jumped on his back
and took him down -
his body collapsing from my weight -
then dragging him up the stairs of the stoop by his heels
until my mother stopped me.

Even as I write this, sorrow.

No victory, because no contest -
The air flush with the unfairness of it all -
even before I launched myself.
In the future, my enemies would see this sorrow
and, so seeing, so despise me.

Years later, my mother would tell me
Joey died as a construction worker -
before his nineteenth birthday –
a nail through his eye -
and sorrow to think on what I had done.



						Brandywine
						12/06/2000